


Intersect

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: Homestuck, Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Gen, because homestuck lends itself to a sense8 AU so well, can be read without knowledge of Sense8, i had to do it i am not sorry, if you don't know sense8 it just reads like a scifi homestuck au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4141293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Egbert does not know Rose Lalonde does not know Dave Strider does not know Jade Harley. </p>
<p>That changes, fast. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Or, the homestuck sense8 AU, in which the beta kids are a cluster.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. first breaths.

You’re sitting on a ratty old couch in your best-friend-brother-self’s apartment with your best-friend-sister-self and she’s gasping for breath. You’re clutching her arms and babbling comforting words mixed with expletives, christ, jesus fuck, you’ve never been good at being supportive, at least you’ve never been fucking good at expressing it. She’s heaving, her body contracting, and you have no idea what to do. Where is Sollux? Terezi? Vriska? Gamzee? Equius? Nepeta? Tavros? Aradia? Eridan? Feferi?

 

Kanaya is giving birth, metaphorically. Her eyes flicker. You hold her tighter.

 

“Fuck, Kan, hold on, I’ve got you, I’ve got you. Do you want drugs? Fuck, would drugs even help?”

She takes a gasping breath.

“It’s, ah, it’s alright, Karkat, I don’t think they would, ahh, work right now, anyway.”

She tries to smile, it comes out more a grimace.

“Thank you, though.”

“Yeah. Fuck. You’re gonna be fine, ok, it’s all going to be fine.”

You sit in silence for a moment, punctuated by breath.

And then Kanaya arches outward, her pupils dilating, and-

 

* * *

 

You’re sitting down at your piano when you look out the window. Sitting on your old slime ghost ride is a strange woman, with green eyes and black lipstick and a red, red skirt. She smiles at you and you smile back and she waves. You blink, and there’s nobody there. You wrinkle your forehead and peer into the yard.

 

Must have been a trick of the light. You place your fingers back on the keyboard.

* * *

 

You’re at the mall with your mother, one of her innumerable, passive aggressive attempts at mommy-daughter bonding, when you spot her out of the corner of your eye. A tall girl with green eyes and a gorgeous face, staring at you from behind a rack of sweaters. You smile at her, maybe a little lasciviously, and the side of her lip quirks upwards. You step forwards. A crowd of laughing teenagers cuts in front of you like a school of brightly colored fish, and when they disperse, the girl is gone.

 

You frown. Damn, she had been cute.

* * *

 

You’re in the bathroom, taking semi-ironic selfies with your polaroid when you suddenly see her in the mirror. You totally do not scream like a little girl, nearly dropping the camera. She’s behind you in your reflection but when you turn around there’s no one there. You flip back to the mirror, and there’s the girl, the girl with black lips and an awkward smile and a black shirt with the virgo symbol on it. You peer at her for a moment. When you turn back to check again, she’s gone.

 

You bite your lip and peer into the mirror.

* * *

 

You’re sitting on a hill, playing with Bec, when you see the girl walk out of the trees. You get up with a gasp, there’s no one who lives here except for you and the next supply drop isn’t scheduled for another few weeks. You start running toward the girl in the red skirt, and she walks back into the forest.

 

You spend the next few hours combing the forest for any sign of another person. You don’t find her, and Bec doesn’t smell anything either.

* * *

  
  


It’s over.

Kanaya smiles at you, eyelids flickering. She’s still gripping your hand nearly hard enough to draw blood.

 

“They’re beautiful,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” you say, hoarsely. You swallow dryly.

“I fucking hope we haven’t made a terrible mistake.”

 

 


	2. second glances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meetings and meetings. 
> 
> thanks for the support xoxo

You hug your mother before she leaves. She gives you a kiss on the cheek and squishes your face between her hands before saying, “Be good, Rosie! Love you!” and slamming the door to her car, as you say “You too, mom.” She waves as she drives off, smiling. You wave from the sidewalk, leaning against the parking meter.

Even though you’re older now, and your relationship with your mother is much repaired since when you were younger, she’s still frustrating. A curious blend of smothering, supportive, and whimsical, she’s maddening. Roxy Lalonde is the type of person who drives to her daughter’s university on a Thursday afternoon without a word of warning and takes her on a shopping spree before speeding off into the sunset in a silver convertible.

Leaving Rose with three shopping bags filled with clothes she doesn’t need that she needs to drag back to her dorm room.

And the worst part of it is is that she’s not even being ironic. Roxy Lalonde is one-hundred percent genuine when it comes to love for her daughter, and Rose can’t hate her for that.

Family is complicated, even when it’s not, Rose thinks. She bends down to scoop up the bags, and looks up to see a messy-haired boy with glasses and a shocked expression holding a bucket of confetti. His mouth falls in a perfect “o” exposing his buckteeth. He looks around wildly.

“Holy crap, where am I?” the boy exclaims.

“41st and Spruce Street, it says so on the sign.”

“No I mean, a second ago I was in my dorm room, unpacking, and the next I was standing here. Where are we?”

And suddenly they’re not standing on a sunny Philadelphia street, but in a cinderblock-lined dorm room with two beds. One side of the room is covered in posters of movies, and the bed is made up in Ghostbusters sheets. It’s charmingly juvenile. The blue-eyed boy is sitting on the bed. Rose blinks twice.

“I was going to say the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, but now I’m not sure. Is this your dorm room? Do you know what’s going on?”

The boy laughs, a sort of snorting giggle.  

“If I did, do you think I’d be asking you?”

She smiles at him, his good humor is infectious, even though her mind whirrs with the possibilities of what is currently happening. She tilts her head. 

“Are you even real?”

He sticks out his tongue.

“Are _you_ even real?”

Rose frowns.

“I know I’m real, but you could just be particularly vivid hallucination, and I might just finally be going insane.”

The boy shrugs.

“I mean, I could say the same thing. But I know I’m real! Hi, I’m John.”

He holds out a hand. Rose hesitantly takes it. He feels solid and warm, his hands are larger than hers.

“Rose.”

John beams at her.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Rose Hallucination Lady. Jeez, there’s a lot of that going around lately. Oh wait, I know, I’ll give you my phone number. If you’re real, then someone else will be able to hear your voice.”

He gets up and sets down the bucket of confetti and pulls out a phone, and suddenly they’re standing on a sunny street again.

Rose nods.

“That’s a good idea, but do you mind waiting until we get back to my dorm room? I left my phone charging earlier, and I forgot to bring it out.”

“Sure. Do you want me to carry anything for you?”

“Can you?”

“I don’t know, let’s see. Wait, lemme just set this up first.” 

John crosses the room to precariously wedge the bucket over the doorframe. Rose watches him with interest.

He then hesitantly reaches over to pick up a bag. The handle fits solidly in his hand, the weight feels real. He picks it up, and it stays lifted. Rose watches in fascination. John notices her staring, and shrugs. 

“Lead the way, I have no idea where we’re going.”

This day keeps getting stranger and stranger.

* * *

 

 

“Dibs on first shower,” Dave says, and flashsteps over to the staircase leading down to their apartment. As he leaves, he hears Bro snort.

Dave knows he’s only getting first shower because Bro wants to spend like, an hour, in there, and Dave will bitch if he has to sit around stewing in his own sweat for that long. He can feel his shirt sticking to his skin, his hair plastered to his forehead. Even his shades are sweaty.

Bro is a sadist for wanting to strife in this heat. But it had been good, it was nice to stretch his fighting muscles, to do something active.

Maybe taking a gap year before starting college had been a bad idea. It seemed like he was just spinning his wheels, waiting for his life to start. The problem was he didn’t really know what he wanted to do, maybe he shouldn’t even be going to college.

Dave frowns slightly to himself as he walks down the flights of stairs to his and Bro’s apartment. Whatever. The decision had already been made. No sense thinking too hard about it now. Maybe he’d ask Bro what he thought, not that he would give Dave any good advice.

 

He opens the front door with minimal fuss.

 

Dave tosses his t-shirt on the floor on the way to the bathroom, stripping his pants off and boxers too, tossing them on the bathroom counter. He pulls a stray puppet off of the showerhead and throws that on the counter as well before turning the handle to turn the water on. The spray starts with a sharp hiss, and he sets his shades down lightly before stepping into the cold water and suddenly he is standing in a rainstorm with his toes curling on wet grass and thunder rumbling above.

Oh, and a green-eyed girl wearing a long skirt and holding a massive rifle in front of him. Naked him. Dave Strider is suddenly standing in front of a strange girl while wearing no clothes and no shades.For the second time in a week, Dave shrieks like a little girl in the bathroom.

The girl screams back and aims the rifle at him.

 

Shit.

* * *

 

 

John isn’t quite sure what’s going on. One moment he was in his dorm room, feeling sort of lost in this new room in a new school in a new town, setting up a sweet prank on his roommate. And the next he’s standing on a busy city street talking with a pretty, kind of edgy looking girl. But that’s stereotyping, anyway, and she seems perfectly friendly for a maybe-hallucination.

Her bag feels real, anyway.

She leads him down the sidewalk, every so often glancing at him.

“So are you a freshman?”

Wow, way to ask a dumb, trite question, John. Argh! Stupid, stupid. She nods.

“Yeah, I started a few weeks ago. I assume you are, as well?”

“Mmhm. I started today though, We’re on the quarter system in most places on the west coast. What’s college like?”

Rose shrugs.

“It’s...strange. In a good way. It’s a lot more freedom, but also more responsibility. I think you’ll like it a lot, it’s fun. I don’t know if I want to go back home after this, though. My mom came to visit me today, and I guess that was nice. That’s why I have all these bags, she took me shopping.”

“You guess?”

She looks off into the distance and bites her lip.

“Don’t get me wrong, It was nice. It was just, weird seeing her again, after I’d gotten used to being on my own here. Is it embarrassing to say that I didn’t know how to use the laundry machines when I got here?”

John laughs.

“A little bit! But my dad does most of the laundry at home so I’ll be embarrassed with you, I don’t know if I’ll be any better.”

Rose smiles at him.

“That’s a relief. What are you studying?”

“Mm. I’m not sure yet. Maybe computer science, or film stuff. Maybe music. You?”

“English, I think. I thought about psychology but I’m taking the intro class now and it’s terrible.”

“Cool.”

They walk a few steps in silence. Rose swipes them into a large dorm complex that looks vaguely castle-ish. John sits down on his bed.

Rose turns and asks, “By the way, what was up with the bucke-”

John’s dorm room opens, and the bucket falls with a crash on somebody’s head. The guy screams “What the fuck!?” and confetti is everywhere and suddenly Rose is gone and John is sitting on his bed looking at a violently cursing guy with a bucket on his head.

John laughs.

* * *

 

The naked guy screams, and she screams back in shock. It’s not every day that a nudist appears in front on a girl in the middle of a rainstorm, you know.

The guy claps a hand over his mouth. He’s still there, he’s still naked. Jade stands stock still. They are a frozen tableau.

“Hey, you alright in there, kid? 

A vaguely accented masculine voice floats over to them, and suddenly Jade isn’t standing in the middle of a field but in a cramped bathroom. There are clothes in the sink and a puppet (a puppet?) sitting on top of them. The naked boy, who is standing underneath a showerhead, coughs and yells back hoarsely,

“Yeah, I’m fine, Bro.”

“Alright, because you scream again I’m going to break down the door and neither of us want that.”

“Yeah, okay, you’re a sick freak, dude.”

The boy turns off the water and with a perfect poker face (Or, well, it would have been perfect, except for the fact that Jade had just seen him screaming his head off, and he’s still dripping wet), turns to Jade and says,

“Do you mind not pointing a rifle at me, because that would be kind of great.”

Jade looks down, and well, would you look at that, she’s all set up to take a potshot at the guy. She smiles apologetically, and sets the gun down. He nods. Jade looks at him in fascination. His eyes are bright red. He has surprisingly nice musculature. His slick wet hair is dirty blond.

“Thanks.”

He reaches over and snags a towel from the rack and deftly knots it around his waist. He pauses, and looks over at her again.

“Uh, do you want a towel?”

Jade smiles wider.

“That’d be great, actually. I was out exploring when the thunderstorm hit.”

He nods again and passes her a second fluffy towel, which she uses to scrub at her hair and wipe her glasses. They immediately speckle over with water again, and they’re back to standing in the grass near her tower. The boy looks around, now wearing a pair of dark aviator glasses. 

“You got any idea what’s going on?”

Jade shakes her head.

“Nope! No idea whatsoever. This island is deserted, except for me, and I wasn’t expecting to see uh, a naked guy, appearing in front of me. So sorry for sticking the rifle in your face!”

He shrugs.

“It’s fine. I would have done the same thing if I saw a random nudist appear in front of me.”

Jade giggles.

“I’m Jade, nice to meet you, who are you?”

“I’m Dave. So, not to be rude and all, but what are you doing in my bathroom?”

“Still have no idea, I’m afraid. Where are you?”

“Houston, Texas. You?”

“Um, I don’t think it has a name. It’s an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

“Wait, really? What are you doing there?”

Jade shrugs.

“Living, mostly.”

There’s a banging on the door.

“Kid, if you’re done in there, it’d be cool to be able to take a shower, just saying. Who’re you talking to?”

 

And Jade is alone again.

 

* * *

 

Karkat had been perfectly composed, opening the door to his new dorm room. He was sharing with a freshman, he was pretty sure, and that suited him just fine, some new, vaguely scared asshole who probably wouldn’t bother him that much. It was cheaper than getting a single, even though Feferi had offered to pay for it. Borrowing money from his cluster didn’t sit right with him, even though they were technically “one being with separate bodies and consciousnesses.”

And then the bucket of confetti fell on his head and in a panic he thinks he’s being attacked and almost switches with Terezi until he realizes it’s only a bucket, so of course he started yelling, what else was he supposed to do?

And his roommate was laughing! Laughing!

Still cursing under his breath, Karkat lifted the bucket over his head, and looked over at his roommate, ready to unleash a serious verbal beatdown.

And he stopped. 

“Nice to meet you! I’m John, your roommate. Sorry about the prank, haha."

“Are you goddamn fucking kidding me.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes: 
> 
> Rose is at Upenn because I go there and I figured I might as well make it easy on myself because I know the schedule + campus. Penn has a hella nice english major/program and also it’s far enough from new york that I think Rose would go there, but close enough that Roxy would probs come and visit. 
> 
> I have no idea yet where John goes. I’m thinking probably one of the UC’s. He’s on the west coast, and suggestions are welcome. 
> 
> Rose and John making college frosh talk cracks me up. It’s so mundane. 
> 
> I felt a bit like Jade and Daves sections were a bit pointless.
> 
> Everyone is suffering a little bit from “talks way too much about their personal life to strangers syndrome” here, but the sense8 cluster also did a bit of that, and I’m chalking up the oversharing to them feeling like they’ve met people who are familiar, who are part of the group, the same limbs of a larger being. 
> 
> I also felt like putting Karkat in as johns roomie was a bit too much but fuckit, this is a self indulgent fic and I might as well go all out.
> 
> Please please please tell me what you think! I live for feedback.
> 
> If you want to know more about this 'verse or have questions or wanna just chill I'm @ anonymousAlchemist.tumblr.com
> 
> peace, kids.

**Author's Note:**

> for more fandom shenanigans hit me up at anonymousAlchemist.tumblr.com.
> 
> thanks for reading, love you babes, leave a message/kudos if you liked this so I know to keep going :)


End file.
